Is Putin the saviour of Syria?

The inauguration of Vladimir Putin could just prove the circuit breaker needed for peace in Syria.

When Vladimir Putin takes the oath of office to become the Russian President once again, many expect his defence of Syria's leadership to only become as hardline as his bare-chested antics.

But quietly underpinning all this could in fact be a carefully crafted political strategy that could for the first time seriously place the war-torn country on the path to peace.

And with the Annan Peace Plan not quite dead on arrival but certainly limping towards cardiac arrest - it is time for the rest of the world to be championing just this scenario.

Damascus and Moscow have long been natural bedfellows with their relationship stretching back four decades to the start of the Assad family's dictatorial grip on power.

In 1971, a deal was done to forgive three quarters of Syria's Soviet-era debt in return for the establishment of a Russian warm water naval base in Tartus, the second largest port city.

Today, Tartus remains Russia's only overseas military base and a key strategic counterweight to the United States presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

And what's more, Russian exports to their southern neighbour totalled around $1.1 billion in 2010 with investments in the country to the tune of $19.4 billion. Only in Iraq does Russia have any other serious interests in the region.

But perhaps most controversially, a recent report from the Stockholm Peace Research Institute found that 78 per cent of arms obtained by Syria in the last decade came stamped with three words: "Made in Russia".

It is little wonder therefore that all this has set the scene for delicate tightrope diplomacy by Moscow in recent months where they have sought to support stability but not Assad as the fighting continues. The problem of course is that to Russia you cannot have the former without the latter.

But that said, there is no doubt that Syria is an incredibly complex situation.

While in Libya there was a highly-organised resistance force fuelled by wholesale defections from the military, in Syria the armed forces are much larger, stronger and loyal. Many Syrians are themselves worried about the ensuing chaos in any post-Assad complex as was seen in Iraq after Saddam where Islamist parties rose, Christians were persecuted and secular academics and bureaucrats purged.

Ultimately Assad will have to go - probably to Saudi Arabia which cannot deny a Muslim passage and famously provided exile for the former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and more recently the ousted Tunisian president Ben Ali - it is just a matter of when. Yet ironically, despite its recent intransigence Russia could be the key to this.

There is little doubt that when Putin returns to the corner office in the Kremlin many are predicting him to make his presence on the world stage known.

And while to many this will likely take the form of doom and gloom, helping solve the Syrian crisis would not only position Putin as a global saviour but allow him to muscle up to Washington in the process.

Critical to any shift in position will be the opening of direct negotiations with the Syrian opposition, crucially to guarantee the longevity of the Tarus base but also to honour existing oil and arms trade deals. In the last fortnight reports have emerged of Russian officials meeting with members of the Syrian opposition.

Unfortunately there is unlikely to be any movement before the Assad Peace Plan formally collapses sometime in the next week or so. At that point the United Nations Security Council will likely push for a second resolution which could result in Russian support and the Chinese the only abstention.

But critical to this will be the support and pressure of the Arab League.

Indeed, perhaps the most enduring falsehood of the Libyan saga has been that it was Gaddafi's "rivers of blood" speech that catalysed the United Nations Security Council into action. In reality, it was the endorsement of the Arab League for a no-fly zone that did, providing the much needed regional legitimacy for action by NATO forces.

To help pressure the Kremlin, the Arab League should consider dispatching a mission to Turkey designed to help shore up possible NATO support for any action under their Article V obligations to the member state.

This is similar to the plan proposed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman who have called for the establishment of a safe passage to Turkey for Syrian refugees protected by NATO air support.

Another critical moment will no doubt come when Putin travels to Camp David on May 18 for the G8 Summit, his first overseas trip back in office.

In recent years, Putin has been incensed by the Obama administration's attempts to align themselves with Medvedev, in a clear backhand to his own legacy and prospects for a return to the presidency.

But as one commentator recently remarked, "That's like cozying up to the monkey in the hopes of showing up the organ grinder".

Infamously, Hillary Clinton presented her adept and grumpy Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov a red button inscribed with the words "reset" on their first meeting. Unfortunately the Russian translation was wrong, and it did not even use the Cyrillic alphabet.

Regardless, it has hardly proven effective.

Despite capturing ten Russian spies in the United States just days before the Obama-Medvedev "Hamburger Summit" and scrapping plans for a missile defence shield covering Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, the Kremlin has done little to please Washington in return, particularly over Iran.

Admittedly, when it comes to Syria putting all your hope in Putin is like going all in during a poker hand with nothing more than a pair, but it could just be the world's best hope.

And for the Syrian people - who have now lost between 7,000 and 11,000 of their own - hope is everything right now.

Thom Woodroofe is an associate fellow of The Asia Society. Follow on Twitter @thomwoodroofe. View his full profile here.